Skip to content

R results explanation

2 messages · Matevz Pavlic, Duncan Murdoch

Matevz Pavlic
# 
Hi all, 

 
this might be a stupid question, but still. 

Everytime i find some new function it's prettty easy to understand how to
use the syntax and to perform a text. Even the general idea of what the
function does is pretty easy to understand, but i can not find an
explanation (detailed explanation) of the R output for each function. For
example, a function fitdistr() in MASS package i testing the data against
the distributions (wanted distribution). 

fitdistr(k, "lognormal")
3.150725905   0.759584332 
 (0.012839319) (0.009078769)

But when i get the result I can not find what these numbers mean. Is there a
explanation somewhere in R help for each function?

Thanks for the help, m

--
View this message in context: http://r.789695.n4.nabble.com/R-results-explanation-tp3578918p3578918.html
Sent from the R help mailing list archive at Nabble.com.
Duncan Murdoch
#
On 07/06/2011 4:14 AM, mpavlic wrote:
The Value section of the help page describes what the function returns. 
The help page for fitdistr has

Value:

      An object of class ?"fitdistr"?, a list with four components,

estimate: the parameter estimates,

       sd: the estimated standard errors,

     vcov: the estimated variance-covariance matrix, and

   loglik: the log-likelihood.


You should be aware that objects often print only part of their value; 
the rest can be extracted using the usual methods, e.g.

fit <- fitdistr(k, "lognormal")
fit$loglik

will print the log likelihood.

This doesn't explain what "meanlog" and "sdlog" are; for that you need 
to know about the lognormal distribution, or consult the reference on 
the help page.

Duncan Murdoch